Readyish

Some time ago I started a thing. The first piece of information you need to understand this… is to know that Final Fantasy XIV for whatever reasons does not have an idle kick. I remember this causing so much issue during the launch during, and them finally having to implement one. However at some point they turned it back off and sometimes we abuse the hell out of it. Kodra is notorious for staying logged into things… and Final Fantasy XIV is not exception. I remember there have been times when he has stayed logged in in some hub like Mor Dhona for literal days. One night he happened to be AFKing and I decided it would be funny to update the guild MOTD to say something to the effect of finding Free Company members AFK and taking awkward photos with them. This was something that regularly happened in World of Warcraft, and most of the photos were questionable to say the least. Sita however has decided to turn this into an art form and the photos just keep getting better. As you can see.. I made the mistake of going afk right out in front of our guild house. I had been alt tabbed doing other things and it wasn’t long before a number of photos of me and other people showed up on Sita’s twitter feed.

You have to admit they are pretty great. Sita has caught a bunch of Ashgar, Sol, and Kodra as well over time. As far as Final Fantasy XIV goes… we are now in the great outage that is preparing everything for the headstart launch of Stormblood. In theory at 2 am PDT or 4 am my time on Friday the servers come back up… and we officially transition into 4.0. Am I completely ready for this? Truthfully no. I feel like I have done very little to prepare for the launch of an expansion, but I did manage to mostly clear out my bags and also put a dent in some of the stuff that had been clogging my retainer. The biggest problem right now is I don’t remember at all where the MSQ last left off. If I had to guess… the Rising Stones in Mor Dhona since everything seems to take place there. I am not nearly as pumped for this launch as I was for Heavensward, only because I have so many other things to distract me. I am still spending a significant amount of time in World of Warcraft doing random stuff and enjoying myself. I think part of my trepidation is that I know the moment I log in Friday, my character will have changed. Warrior from all accounts is one of the least changed classes, but with Heavensward I knew that more or less I was only going to be adding tools to my kit rather than swapping for a slightly different kit. Functionally those first few levels are largely going to be me getting accustomed to driving a new character, and I am hoping I pick it up quickly.

I think the part I am looking forward to the most however is seeing all the faces show up and seeing the Free Company be a thriving hub once again. That is the part of an MMO cycle that is the hardest to really put into words, is how awesome the launch of a new batch of content is. Folks you might not have seen in months suddenly show up and are interested in doing stuff. I’ve been in one of those cycles where I have simply not been around, and I am looking forward to digging in and getting involved in shenanigans. That said I don’t really want to launch of Stormblood to stall any of the other things I have going on. For example I still want to keep moving the whole RoboSquid thing forward and continuing to take down dungeons with minimal gear and level. I am probably going to take a few weeks off of the Friday night thing in World of Warcraft, but ultimately I want to return to that as well because I still enjoy hanging out with that group of friends. Then there is the huge backlist of things that I really need to play that are not MMO based. E3 had this weird effect of making me want to play games that are already out, more so than making me long for the games on the horizon. Well that is other than Destiny 2… I kinda want access to that now. That said it will have released before I realize it. The older you get the faster time seems to move and right now entire months evaporate before I realize it. Stormblood seems like it was still off in the distance… and now instead it is launching tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to PS4 Pro support, but I still haven’t upgraded to Heavensward. I’m also not looking forward to long log-in queues, let alone super-long (DPS) party queues.Pete S recently posted..E3 2017: The Year of the Expansion